Low Food Symposium - Spiced Identities
Op 21 november vond het Low Food Symposium - Spiced Identities plaats in het auditorium van het Rijksmuseum. Als programmamaker kreeg ik carte blanche, want op de vraag of ze al een thema in gedachten hadden was het antwoord: ‘kom maar met een voorstel’. Er was eigenlijk maar een onderwerp waar ik het over wilde hebben in het kader van hoe we de Nederlandse eetcultuur een push kunnen geven naar meer inclusief en duurzamer: specerijen.
De energieke Sana Javeri Kadri inspireerde iedereen met haar verhaal over hoe zij met Diaspora eerlijke handel nastreeft met duurzame en vooral ook smaakvolle specerijen. Daarna ging ze samen met Marianne van Keep van Verstegen en Rico Vogel van Pacific SpiZes in gesprek, onder leiding van Marieke Eyskoot en met kritische vragen van Lelani Lewis, over hoe de wereld van specerijen een nog betere toekomst tegemoet kan gaan.
Kookboekschrijfster en levende legende van de Chinese keuken Fuchsia Dunlop vertelde hoe de chilipeper zijn plek heeft gevonden in Sichuan en over hoe de Chinese eetcultuur in het algemeen zwaar ondergewaardeerd wordt.
Oliver Rowe sloot het geheel af met Alice den Boer, Sasker Scheerder, Elzelinde van Doleweerd en Samuel Levie met een gesprek over de Low Food Labs waarin ieder van hun onderzoek naar een specifiek product toelichtte.
Op het laatst gooide corona roet in het eten waardoor ik er niet bij kon zijn. Het resultaat werd er gelukkig niet minder om en Nadia Zerouali, bestuurslid van Low Food, droeg alsnog mijn speech voor.
Mijn speech voor het Low Food Symposium - Spiced Identities
For centuries spices have given our food enticing fragrances and flavours as well as heat. Spices challenge our taste buds and bring joy to our food.
Flavours such as cumin, cinnamon and cloves are ingrained in our cuisine. Cumin in cheese, cinnamon in speculaas and pepernoten and cloves in traditional cured sausages. Flavours so familiar we hardly notice them.
But what do we really know about those spices?
Today we all know where our carrots, chicken filet and coffee comes from. We can choose between different varieties of carrots, know where that chicken was raised and there’s a picture of the coffee farmer at the back of the package, while effortlessly naming all the reasons why it’s important to know all this. From encouraging biodiversity to reducing animal cruelty and from increasing fair wages to minimizing climate change.
But do we even know where our spices come from? Do we know under what circumstances they are grown? Do we know about different varieties? Do we dare to face the ugly part of history that comes with it, that still plays out today in so many ways? Afterall, the wealth that we’re living in, even the building that we are in right now, is a direct result of the spice trade. There are so many questions, I sometimes don’t know where to start.
In that case the only place to start is yourself. We all eat spices, even if it’s just the mindless crack of black pepper on our daily dinner. So we all have a spiced identity.
When creating this programme and thinking of my own spiced identity there was one in particular that kept coming back: cloves. It’s a distinctive ingredient in Groninger droge worst, a typical cured sausage from the north of the Netherlands where I grew up. But cloves are not native to the Netherlands, far from that. They’re native to Indonesia, a country where I can find a part of my roots as well. So how did they end up there? How do you harvest them? And what does a clove plant even look like?
As I said, so many questions! And this is just the beginning.
The conclusion to this story is not that I am a Groninger sausage. The conclusion is that making a food culture more sustainable and inclusive might seem as an impossible task. But we all eat our culture on a daily basis. So maybe, when we all start by asking questions about our food, starting with spices and our own spiced identity, and changing our mind from time to time, we might nudge it in the right direction.
Not just the wealth that came with it and that we still enjoy today?
It’s about time that we dive into this topic, because there is so much still to learn and it’s the thing that gives our food flavour and identity.
The spice trade has shaped and created the wealth we live in while at the same time there is a dark history connected to these lovely flavours. Have things changed? What do we know about the farmers cultivating our spices today? Since we have specialty coffee and bean-to-bar cocoa, isn't it time to critically reexamine the world of spices? What have we learnt from the past? Are the stories as appetizing as the spices we eat?